Jobs Debate
Jason Johnston - Emporia Gazette
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
The jobs debate is the most important and contentious issue affecting America today. It must bring results; otherwise, more people will lose their jobs or stop looking for employment.
Even though the national unemployment rate decreased from 9.0 to 8.6 percent in November over the previous month and 140,000 workers were added to the private sector, 316,000 people stopped looking for a job.
President Barack Obama and Congress must extend emergency unemployment benefits past the June 9, 2012, deadline for qualified individuals.
Democrats and Republicans must put aside political differences and come up with a plan to put people back to work through projects such as infrastructure and road products and create incentives for companies to hire more American workers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the unemployment numbers the first Friday of each month. The U.S. Census Bureau generates the data from the Current Population Survey — a monthly survey of households.
Retail employment rose by 50,000 in November, with most of it coming from clothing and clothing accessories stores. However, the U.S. Postal Service cut 5,000 jobs.
There were 1.1 million discouraged workers in the U.S., a decrease of 186,000 over October.
Involuntary part-time workers dropped by 375,000 to 8.5 million. These employees work part-time to cover their decreased hours or because they are unable to find a full-time job.
Employers have to put employee welfare and job security before profits because employees do the work that is required to sustain the employers’ current endeavors and future vision.
The U.S. is a service-based economy. If workers are laid off or make less wages, then they cannot support the economy.
America cannot afford another recession. It must be allowed to recover and put every citizen to work.
Observer (anonymous) says...
America is still in recession, and the unemployment numbers do not reflect those whose unemployment has run out.
Unlike the Great Depression we no longer have the industry to facilitate a recovery. Too much industry is now overseas do to NAFTA and GATT, no tariff protection/incentive to manufacture in the US.
How can our industry compete with slave labor wages for the same product from another country. No EPA standards, no social security, no workman's compensation, low/no insurance mandates, low/no taxes.
The both democrats and republicans shot our industrial employment base right in the foot under Clinton, and we may not recover without a devaluation of the dollar.
Obama can run around making all the campaign speeches he wants, but our economy may not recover.
December 7, 2011 at 11:55 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
goodoleboy (anonymous) says...
Our industrial base has been in decline for a lot longer than the 90's. We have a shot to recover, if we get into the green energy race, China is already kicking our tail at it purposefully driving our companies here underwater.
We could have been the innovators at the helm of our large Hadron collider but republicans killed it in the 90's.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek...
Makes me sick to think of all the money we wasted on wars that we could have put into science, space, green energy research, and maintained our dominance in those fields. Our infrastructure would have been a much better use of funds than the wars.
Many times what I say gets painted as democratic priorities, but in reality they should transcend partisanship, these are issues the right and left should both agree on, the world is standing by waiting on us to get our crap together.
December 7, 2011 at 1 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
create (anonymous) says...
Yeah, goodoleboy, but, but, but, but, there were WMD's.
December 7, 2011 at 1:10 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
goodoleboy (anonymous) says...
Not just the current wars Create, the Cold War was a huge waste of resources and a major contributor to our deficit, but at least Reagan had the foresight and wisdom to invest in science and technology.
December 7, 2011 at 1:38 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
rabblerouser (anonymous) says...
But we have ROCKS!!!!!
December 7, 2011 at 2:30 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )